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Hey all. I sent this over to Paeter, so hopefully it'll be in a podcast soon. Here's the written review.
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The first episode of The Walking Dead video game was released just recently on Steam and when I saw it, I grabbed it. Totally an impulse buy, which is kinda rare for me, but I thoroughly enjoy The Walking Dead comics. The Walking Dead, for those who don’t know, is a gripping story created by Robert Kirkman which is about the survivors of a zombie apocalypse. The award-winning comics have resulted in a popular TV show and most recently in video games. The draw of The Walking Dead (and really all of Kirkman’s work) has been the characters of his stories. They are real people making tough decisions and having to live with the consequences. You believe they are surviving and doing what they have to do to keep going.
That trademark is translated in spades through to the game. Your character, Lee Everett, is put into the story’s timeline just as the breakout is hitting and he is on his way out of Atlanta. He ends up befriending a young first-grade girl whose parents’ fate is unknown (but you can pretty much assume what happened to them). You take her under your wing and meet several interesting characters, some of whom will be familiar to you if you are aren’t new to the lore. For example, you meet up with Glenn and at the end of Episode 1 he leaves your group to head to Atlanta (which is where you first met him in the comics).
The Walking Dead game is an adventure style game in which you have to walk around, interact with people, and sometimes search for clues. I like this style of game -- the King’s Quest games were some of my favorites of all time. But I admit the weakness of adventure games is that it sometimes gets frustrating trying to figure out just what the game designers are trying to lead you towards. I did not have much of a problem with that in this case. The puzzles were simple and straightforward. As a matter of fact...do you remember the old choose your own adventure books? I might even go as far to say that the game has more in common with those books than with King’s Quest. It feels like a very heavily interactive digital comic. The decisions you make impact the outcome of the story. People die because of the decisions you make! And you then have to deal with the impact of that. Throughout the game there are several very suspenseful, tense, and panicky moments. You have to make quick decisions (yes, there’s a timer), go with it, and live with the choices you made.
The art design is great. It has a very “comic book” feel to it. Again I’ll go back to that it feels like a very heavily interactive digital comic. The interface is a little weird at times, but is overall easy to use. Sometimes the camera angles were a little rigid and I wished I could have moved things a bit, but nothing major.
If you’re familiar with the comic books, then you already know they are not for kids. And neither is this game. Just like the comics there is plenty of blood and guts, profanity, tense situations, suicide, and probably more things I’m not thinking of that I wouldn’t want my children exposed to.
In typical comic book style, the game will be released in episodes. There will be a total of five episodes which will be released monthly. You can buy all five episodes for $25. It’s not only available on PC, but also Xbox, PS3, and Mac.
I’m not the fastest of players (I like to explore a lot), and the first episode gave me about three hours of entertainment. Considering the quality of game and how gripping the story is, I consider this to be $5 well spent and am eager to play Episode 2! I would give it a Quality rating of 9.3. Pretty much all good zombie entertainment can lead to good conversations, but I think the gripping nature of this story lends itself especially toward this. In addition to the normal zombie apocalypse fodder, you could chat with your friends about the decisions you made and why, so I give it a Relevance rating of 9.0.
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The first episode of The Walking Dead video game was released just recently on Steam and when I saw it, I grabbed it. Totally an impulse buy, which is kinda rare for me, but I thoroughly enjoy The Walking Dead comics. The Walking Dead, for those who don’t know, is a gripping story created by Robert Kirkman which is about the survivors of a zombie apocalypse. The award-winning comics have resulted in a popular TV show and most recently in video games. The draw of The Walking Dead (and really all of Kirkman’s work) has been the characters of his stories. They are real people making tough decisions and having to live with the consequences. You believe they are surviving and doing what they have to do to keep going.
That trademark is translated in spades through to the game. Your character, Lee Everett, is put into the story’s timeline just as the breakout is hitting and he is on his way out of Atlanta. He ends up befriending a young first-grade girl whose parents’ fate is unknown (but you can pretty much assume what happened to them). You take her under your wing and meet several interesting characters, some of whom will be familiar to you if you are aren’t new to the lore. For example, you meet up with Glenn and at the end of Episode 1 he leaves your group to head to Atlanta (which is where you first met him in the comics).
The Walking Dead game is an adventure style game in which you have to walk around, interact with people, and sometimes search for clues. I like this style of game -- the King’s Quest games were some of my favorites of all time. But I admit the weakness of adventure games is that it sometimes gets frustrating trying to figure out just what the game designers are trying to lead you towards. I did not have much of a problem with that in this case. The puzzles were simple and straightforward. As a matter of fact...do you remember the old choose your own adventure books? I might even go as far to say that the game has more in common with those books than with King’s Quest. It feels like a very heavily interactive digital comic. The decisions you make impact the outcome of the story. People die because of the decisions you make! And you then have to deal with the impact of that. Throughout the game there are several very suspenseful, tense, and panicky moments. You have to make quick decisions (yes, there’s a timer), go with it, and live with the choices you made.
The art design is great. It has a very “comic book” feel to it. Again I’ll go back to that it feels like a very heavily interactive digital comic. The interface is a little weird at times, but is overall easy to use. Sometimes the camera angles were a little rigid and I wished I could have moved things a bit, but nothing major.
If you’re familiar with the comic books, then you already know they are not for kids. And neither is this game. Just like the comics there is plenty of blood and guts, profanity, tense situations, suicide, and probably more things I’m not thinking of that I wouldn’t want my children exposed to.
In typical comic book style, the game will be released in episodes. There will be a total of five episodes which will be released monthly. You can buy all five episodes for $25. It’s not only available on PC, but also Xbox, PS3, and Mac.
I’m not the fastest of players (I like to explore a lot), and the first episode gave me about three hours of entertainment. Considering the quality of game and how gripping the story is, I consider this to be $5 well spent and am eager to play Episode 2! I would give it a Quality rating of 9.3. Pretty much all good zombie entertainment can lead to good conversations, but I think the gripping nature of this story lends itself especially toward this. In addition to the normal zombie apocalypse fodder, you could chat with your friends about the decisions you made and why, so I give it a Relevance rating of 9.0.
